Protest and the Politics of Blame

The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages

Debra Javeline

Publication Year: 2003

The wage arrears crisis has been one of the biggest problems facing contemporary Russia. At its peak, it has involved some $10 billion worth of unpaid wages and has affected approximately 70 percent of the workforce. Yet public protest in the country has been rather limited. The relative passivity of most Russians in the face of such desperate circumstances is a puzzle for students of both collective action and Russian politics. In Protest and the Politics of Blame, Debra Javeline shows that to understand the Russian public's reaction to wage delays, one must examine the ease or difficulty of attributing blame for the crisis. Previous studies have tried to explain the Russian response to economic hardship by focusing on the economic, organizational, psychological, cultural, and other obstacles that prevent Russians from acting collectively. Challenging the conventional wisdom by testing these alternative explanations with data from an original nationwide survey, Javeline finds that many of the alternative explanations come up short. Instead, she focuses on the need to specify blame among the dizzying number of culprits and potential problem solvers in the crisis, including Russia's central authorities, local authorities, and enterprise managers. Javeline shows that understanding causal relationships drives human behavior and that specificity in blame attribution for a problem influences whether people address that problem through protest. Debra Javeline is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Rice University.

Cover

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Four institutions were indispensable in bringing this book to fruition.
First, I thank the Office of Research at the U.S. State Department (formerly
the U.S. Information Agency). I collected the data during my time
as a social science research analyst with the office, and I benefited tremendously
from the supportive and energetic leadership of Steven Grant, Ann...

Introduction

It is December 1998, and Vadim and Natasha Stanev have not received a
full salary on a regular basis since 1992. Both are employed—they work at
the Kosfo shoe factory in Kostroma in Russia’s Volga region—but they
are often not paid. Like other workers at the factory, they are owed several
months of back wages.
The Stanevs’ expenses include food, clothing, a seventy ruble (four...

Chapter 1. Why Blame Attribution Matters for Protest

Why do some individuals and groups address their grievances through collective
action, while others endure their situation passively? One explanation
rests on the complexity of the grievance. If a grievance is complicated,
having numerous causes and numerous potential problem solvers, it is
difficult to single out any one cause or remedy and to channel demands...

Chapter 2. Wage Arrears in Russia: A Difficult Issue

What happened to the missing fifty-five trillion rubles in wage arrears?
Why have Russian workers not been getting paid regularly? These are
huge and difficult questions that have puzzled even economists specializing
in Russian affairs. Since the 1990s, Desai and Idson have tackled the
problem with numerous working papers and a book, Work without...

Chapter 3. Whom Russians Blame for Wage Arrears

Given the complexities of the wage arrears crisis and the numerous parties
who have allegedly contributed to it, how have Russians sorted through all
this information and figured out whom or what to blame? Can Russians
sort through all this information and figure out whom or what to blame?
We may infer from the literatures on social psychology and economic voting...

Chapter 4. The Politics of Blame

Ordinary Russians have varied not only in their opinions about the cause
of wage, pension, and stipend delays but also in whether they have
identified a cause at all. Some have attributed blame for the arrears crisis
with great precision and conviction, and some have not. These differences
have played an important role politically. Those Russians who have most...

An explanation about the difficulty of blame attribution is not the one
most commonly offered to explain Russian responses to the wage arrears
crisis. Most explanations instead focus on the economic, psychological,
cultural, and organizational obstacles that have prevented Russian workers
from acting collectively. Such explanations therefore address only half...

Chapter 6. Implications

The Russian public has considered the wage arrears crisis one of the
biggest problems—if not the single biggest problem—facing the country,
yet only a minority of those experiencing arrears have mobilized to protest
the situation. Instead, most Russians have endured the situation without
taking any political action. Their reaction confounds the expectations of...

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